At their best, the Red Sox are capable of beating anyone in baseball. At their worst, they’re capable of jaw-dropping ineptitude of historic proportions.
Tuesday night, those who braved the hour and 40 minute rain delay were treated to the full 2023 Red Sox experience.
Despite running into a rare 8-3-5 triple play, the first in Major League Baseball in 139 years, the Red Sox otherwise dominated the best team in the league and cruised to a comfortable 7-1 win over the Atlanta Braves.
Nick Pivetta once again led the way, lowering his bullpen ERA to 1.98 after pitching five scoreless innings from the second to the sixth inning, and Masataka Yoshida capped off a relentless offensive performance with a two-run home run in the bottom of the eighth to effectively put the game away.
Along the way, the game featured several bizarre and unusual sequences.
In the top of the first the Braves had opener John Schreiber on the ropes with the bases loaded, one out and a 1-0 lead when Marcell Ozuna hit a soft liner to second base. Christian Arroyo caught the ball right before it hit the ground, tried and failed to double up the runner at second and then threw the ball away to apparently allow the the runner to score from third.
However, after a lengthy discussion, the umpires eventually ruled the result a double play. Why? Austin Riley, the runner at third, never tagged up before Arroyo caught the initial liner, so when the Red Sox subsequently appealed to third base he was called out and the Red Sox escaped the jam trailing by only one.
The following inning there was a lengthy delay due to issues with catcher Connor Wong’s PitchCom device, and then in the bottom of the third the Red Sox delivered a lowlight almost without precedent in baseball history.
With two on and no outs, Triston Casas flared a routine fly ball into shallow center field. Braves outfielder Michael Harris easily made the catch, but for some reason Adam Duvall broke for second and was easily doubled up at first base. Then, if that wasn’t bad enough, Yoshida broke for third base from second and was also thrown out by a mile.
The result was the first triple play in MLB so far this season, and only the second 8-3-5 triple play in MLB history. The only other occurrence of a similar play took place all the way back on June 7, 1884 in a game between the Boston Beaneaters, predecessor of the Braves, and the long defunct Providence Grays.
Yet despite all of the strangeness, the Red Sox still managed to take it to the best team in baseball.
After Schreiber limited Atlanta to only a Sean Murphy RBI single in the first, Pivetta came on and shut the Braves down. Pivetta held the Braves to just three hits and a walk while striking out five, and meanwhile the Red Sox offense ground Braves starter Charlie Morton down over 3.2 innings. Morton allowed four runs on six hits, five walks and a hit batter, and all of those runs came with two outs.
Boston first got on the board in the bottom of the first after Justin Turner and Rafael Devers singled and Duvall walked to load the bases. Casas, despite a horrific 2-1 strike call that was half a foot outside the bottom of the strike zone, managed to battle back and draw the bases-loaded walk to tie the game and then Arroyo delivered an RBI single to take a 2-1 lead.
Jarren Duran and Devers tacked on RBI singles in the fourth to make it 4-1, Yu Chang added an RBI single off Braves reliever Michael Tonkin in the fifth and Yoshida took Daysbel Hernandez deep for a two-run shot to cap off the scoring and make it 7-1.
Richard Bleier and Chris Martin followed Pivetta with a scoreless seventh, with Martin striking out Ozzie Albies after Atlanta got two runners in scoring position with two outs, and Joely Rodriguez finished things off with two scoreless innings to close out the win.
Boston improves to 54-47 with the win and is now 2-1 against the Braves on the season overall. The Red Sox can clinch the season series and complete the two-game home sweep on Wednesday when Brayan Bello (7-6, 3.60 ERA) takes the mound against Atlanta’s Spencer Strider (11-3, 3.78). First pitch is scheduled for 7 p.m.